Black Duck, VA Software Flock Together

Two software companies are betting that the open-source developer community is ready for an integrated software development system that also checks for intellectual-property problems.

Black Duck Software Inc. and VA Software Corp. announced Monday the release of an integrated product that includes Black Ducks ProtexIP software compliance management system and VAs SourceForge Enterprise Edition distributed development environment.

This package will automate IP (intellectual property) management and license compliance functions while integrating them within a group development environment.

The companies said that this integrated solution will help distributed teams improve their productivity through more effective use of open-source code and licensed proprietary assets. Both companies are jointly marketing and selling the integrated solution.

"The growing use of open-source code and components from third parties in the software development process increases management complexity and can create business and licensing issues that put software assets at risk," said Melissa Webster, research director of IDC.

"Corporations need the ability to automate effective reuse of internal or open-source assets while ensuring compliance with license obligations," Webster said, adding that these are "key ingredients of maximum development efficiency."

"The open-source community has created a great, collaborative way to develop software," said Doug Levin, Black Ducks CEO, in a statement. "But to be ready for the business world, developers need to make sure that resulting projects do not have underlying IP problems or license compliance issues."

The best thing about developing with these two programs in tandem is that "this integrated solution makes IP management and compliance with both open-source and proprietary licenses an integral part of the development processnot an afterthought," said Colin Bodell, chief technology officer of VA Software.

While the products work well together, according to Henderson, after months of joint development, they are still sold as separate products. There is no shrink-wrap of both programs.

Henderson said that the two programs will work together with the SourceForge interface. Each company will handle technical support for each part of the package. For example, a user with a question about the SourceForge programming tools would work with VA Software, and a user with an IP issue would talk to Black Duck.

While Black Duck has no integrator partners currently offering to deploy the dual-product package for customers, Henderson did say that Black Duck is open to partnerships with integrators who could supply such services.

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